A few "home-ecky" days...

So there are a couple reasons for my title today.  One-- I had a student last year that spelled "Home Ec" like this:  "Home Eck".  I don't know if he actually did it on purpose, as if it was his own personal touch on his papers/folders (because it had somewhat of an artistic design to it also) or if he just had no idea that Home Ec stood for Home Economics which doesn't have a "K" in it.   Or shoot-- maybe he was saying "Home Eck" as in "Ech, YUCK". haha  Anyway, looking back, I guess I should've corrected him more than the couple times that I did.  But since we're supposed to call it "Family and Consumer Sciences", it was a moot point anyway.

Two--- In the past few days, I've done some things that really help me attempt to live up to my "Home Ec teacher" title.  Being on summer break allows for that, which is quite nice.  First of all, I've tried not sleeping in too late.  I have things to get done-- mostly some little errands, house work and the gym  (and that's awfully housewife-ish, is it not??) 

The other day I woke up with Otto because he still had school (I could've slept in and gotten sweet revenge). I made him coffee and some biscuits.  See, here's where the ec-scape part comes in.  They were NOT homemade like my momma taught me to make.  They were from a can.  But DANG! they look good in a photo with my new camera.

And since Otto is somewhat on a diet (or trying to eat well) he ate 1, I ate (cough) 3 and I took the rest to the old people that live down the street.  That's TOTALLY a 1950's housewife thing to do, right???

That night for dinner, I made a salad for us to eat. And with it, I made some delicious roasted asparagus.  I had a fabulous presentation of my "Margot's Cobb Salad" with asparagus on the side--- took a great photograph with perfect aperture setting and then BOOM... there was no SD card in the camera and I didn't realize it until now when I tried to post the picture. boo. But here is what is in the salad.
~Chopped Romaine (Otto buys it at Costco-- I think it has 5 heads to a package)
~ Hard Boiled Egg
~Turkey Bacon (cooked in microwave until very crispy and then broken into small pieces)
~ Feta Cheese (would've preferred blue cheese, but didn't have any)
~Finely chopped Orange (or yellow or red) bell pepper
~Finely chopped red onion
~Chopped carrot 

Otto is strange and doesn't like dressing.  I think he secretly likes it, just doesn't want to add the calories.   But I still add some red wine vinegar and olive oil to it.   On mine, I add the heavenly-- SASS dressing. See below.   It's  Sesame Garlic.  I think you can only get it at like Central Market or maybe Whole Foods.  But it's delish.

The next day (which was yesterday) I went to Aunt Pat's house to learn to paint!! Before leaving, I made a cute little lunch for the two of us.  It consisted of Tuna Salad on thin Oroweat breads, bell pepper slices, mozzarella for tuna MELTs, an orange, and laughing cows wedges. mmm.  Oh yeah, and an egg for me. 

 Auntie (as she calls herself sometimes) has so many talents.. she can quilt, ride/train horses, bead (make jewelry), write articles, scrap (make scrapbooks, but she's also quite scrappy.  I bet she could fight if it came down to it), PAINT, and even wear fake Jessica Simpson hair like it's going out of style!  Since she's really taken to this new hobby of painting, I decided to let her teach her talent to ME.  So, I purchased a 24" x 24" canvas and headed out to Argyle to learn to paint.   I had an inspiration print.  Here it is... Agave by Jillian David. 

So the painting was difficult to get accustomed to.  At first I was soooo nervous and worried.  Aunt Pat was working on another project and would come check on me.  She was probably thinking "we're going to be here for days".  I was working at the speed of molasses.  I started with the yellow.  It was hard to know where it should go and in what shape?!? Afterall, there wasn't really any pure yellow in the picture.  I didn't understand yet how you could paint over colors, blend colors, etc.  Well, I finally got the hang of it, thanks to Pat's quote "We are not afraid of paints and paper" as she stroked wildly on my beloved canvas to show me how to do it.   It did, indeed take all day.  We started at about 11:30 or 11:45 and painted until about 4:45.  There was NO pool/tanning  time like I had planned.   We were originally going to paint the background black like in the inspiration print.  Well, we ended up liking the turquoise base that we put down.  So we kept it.  Aunt Pat says we can always paint over it in black if I decide to.  The last 20 minutes of the paint session was tweaking and touching up the artwork.  It's amazing how just a few added strokes, colors, details, outlines really make your art POP! I wanted the Agave to go above our fireplace, but really, the square shape doesn't work for there.  So I'm going to find it a different fabulous home.  But I was very pleased with my first piece of art.  I already have my next inspiration piece picked out!